In 1958, a bulky package arrived on the desk of Joan Littlewood, the visionary director whose flighty company was roosting in a semi-derelict east-London theatre. It was a debut play by a 19-year-old Salford girl named Shelagh Delaney, and told the story of a teenage girl, her irresponsible mother, her drunk stepfather, a black sailor who gets her pregnant and a gay art student who helps her with the baby. Littlewood decided to stage it, describing Delaney as "the antithesis of London's Angry Young Men. She knows what she is angry about."

The press reported with relish that Delaney had failed her 11-plus four times, describing her "wolfing down a meal of sausage, cabbage, beetroot and weak tea" (Daily Mail), "like a kennelmaid on her day off" (News Chronicle) and having started smoking when she was only six (Evening Standard). She was the real deal: a working-class playwright.

But there was some confusion as to where she actually worked: she was variously described as assisting a photographer and working in a factory. The Daily Telegraph reported that it was as an usher in Salford that she had seen her first play, Terence Rattigan's Variation on a Theme, and left, saying: "I could do better than that." She wrote A Taste of Honey in only 10 days.

Some of the critics thought it showed. The Telegraph took a pot-shot at Delaney and Rattigan (whose fame was then fast fading): "Mr Rattigan will assure Miss Delaney that some dramatists have their disappointments later than others." The Daily Mail's critic thought that the play tasted not of honey but "of exercise books and marmalade" and that its "similarities to real drama are quite accidental". He concluded: "If there is anything worse than an Angry Young Man it's an Angry Young Woman."

Milton Shulman's review in the Evening Standard was headlined, "A good try, Miss Delaney, but I couldn't believe it". Despite its merits ("a rough gusto... and an almost tape-recorder authenticity in some snatches of dialogue"), Shulman felt that the play was "about as convincing as some dream fantasy watched through a distorting mirror", and that its young author "knows as much about adult behaviour as she does about elephants". He gave her a reading list: Shaw, Ibsen, O'Casey, Anouilh and Williams.

But other critics disagreed. The Times's reviewer found the play "tough, humorous... exhilarating" and Kenneth Tynan praised it to the skies. "Miss Delaney brings real people on to her stage, joking and flaring and scuffling and eventually, out of the zest for life she gives them, surviving."

In a side-swipe at the critics who had pruriently detailed Delaney's plot and then accused it of vulgarity, Tynan concluded: "Miss Delaney... is too busy recording the wonder of life as she lives it. There is plenty of time for her to worry over words like 'form', which mean something, and concepts like 'vulgarity' which don't... She is 19 years old and a portent."

He even liked the production, which some had found irritating. Shulman had called the symbolic lighting, jazz trio and music-hall ambience "jittery and stylised... out of key with the author's simple realism". Tynan thought the performances spot-on, citing "brassy" Avis Bunnage and Frances Cuka's "shock-haired careless passion".

Under the headline, "A taste of cash for Shelagh but a kick in the pants for Salford", the Salford City Reporter groused that it wasn't really all that grim up north. Even so, there was no stopping the play's success. It transferred to the West End, went on a national tour and got a production on Broadway, starring Angela Lansbury and Joan Plowright. John Osborne, the original Angry Young Person, bought the film rights for a whopping £20,000; the film was to win an Oscar.

And Delaney was hard at work on her second play, which the Socialist Leader's critic Ted Gomm had hoped would "deal with the lives of other Lancashire workers in the mines, the mills or the factories". While her subsequent plays didn't match the success of A Taste of Honey, she had already made her name - and proved that women could be as angry as men.